


492. displeased

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [247]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 05:44:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10074893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: The twins are waiting for Aldous in his office.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [Project Leto!](http://archiveofourown.org/series/243907)

The twins are in Aldous’ office, radiating irritation. One of them is sitting in a chair at his desk, texting rapidly on her phone, and the other is standing in front of the window. Both of them have their backs turned to the door and yet, as soon as he sees them and hesitates in the doorway, the one in the chair opens her mouth and says: “Hello, Aldous.”

Arbitrarily he decides to name her _Sarah_. Easier that way. He’s learned through the years that it’s impossible to tell them apart – well, it might be possible, but they stubbornly refuse to cooperate. A woman with all of Sarah’s tics smiles flatly at him and says that she is Helena. A woman who was Helena this morning says that, no, she is Sarah.

At least they aren’t dressed the same; at the desk, the twin that might be Sarah has her dark hair in a complicated twisted braid that is pinned to her head and ripples around her ear. She’s wearing a white dress. The twin that might be Helena has her own dark hair pulled back into a severe bun. She’s wearing a white shirt tucked into black trousers, her hands straying to her pockets as she turns around.

“Hello, girls,” Aldous says, already exhausted. “What can I help you with.”

They exchange a look. Helena saunters around the table, removing one hand from her pocket to trail it over the desk. “You’ve changed our monitor,” she says.

“We have consent over our monitors,” adds Sarah.

“Or we’re supposed to.”

“This one seems—”

“—ill-suited.”

“There was an…issue with your previous monitor’s paperwork,” Aldous concedes. “We had to work quickly.”

Sarah’s head snaps around and he is confronted with the predator-lines of her face: sharp eyes, sharp cheekbones, red lips. What a beautiful monster to have made. If only he could take any credit for it; if only he didn’t have to admit that they’d slipped away from him years ago.

“We don’t believe you,” Helena says. Sarah is still watching him, intent; then, abruptly, she isn’t. She’s looking at her sister. Their faces move in small, alien motions. Then they’re both staring at him again. Aldous desperately wishes he could approach his desk, but Helena is barring the way. So he is left lingering in the door, an intruder in his own space.

“Well, believe me or not,” he says. “It’s the truth.” He scoffs a bit of a laugh. “You’ll run through him in a month anyway, I don’t see the problem here.”

A twitch of gaze. A teaspoon of smirking shared between two mouths. “True,” Sarah concedes.

“This one might have lasted longer,” Helena says, “if we’d chosen him.”

“I highly doubt that,” Aldous says.

Sarah tilts her head to the side. “Aldous,” she says, low and sentimental and sad. “You don’t trust us?”

Helena has rounded the desk by now, and she’s standing next to Sarah – Sarah, who has reached almost unconsciously to touch her fingers to Helena’s wrist. They’re beautiful, aren’t they. They did all of it themselves. They vanished at age fourteen into a room without cameras and when they emerged from it their lipstick was immaculate and there was nothing recognizable in their eyes. There isn’t now. They’ve got eyes like needles, and he was supposed to raise them, and at the end of the day he doesn’t even know which one of them is which.

“No,” he says, and his own voice is all of the things Sarah’s was. The difference is that his voice is sincere. “No, I don’t think I do.”

A flash of something genuine sparks through their eyes, and then they turn into each other. One of them murmurs something in the babbling twin-speak they made for each other when they were young. The other one spits something back – and he could name them, but would it stick? Would it matter?

They turn back to Aldous, marble strangers. “Well,” says the woman who might be Sarah or Helena or both.

“Here we are, then,” says the other one. Contrary to her words, she pushes her chair back and stands; her sister moves gracefully out of the way the second she starts to twitch her chair back, so the entire thing looks choreographed. They’re both standing. They are the same height.

“You should start assembling files for us now,” says one of them.

“We doubt this one will last a week.”

“Thank you for your honesty, Aldous,” says the first one, in a way that doesn’t imply gratitude at all.

“Thank you for yours,” he says, and steps away from the door – so that, at the very least, he can watch them go.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
